Members Of California White Supremacist Group Arrested In Charlottesville Rally

(CBS News/AP) — Four members of a militant white supremacist group from California have been arrested on charges they traveled to Virginia last year to incite a riot and attack counterprotesters at a white nationalist rally that turned deadly.

An affidavit unsealed Tuesday says the defendants — Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, Thomas Walter Gillen and Cole Evan White — are part of the Rise Above Movement, which espouses anti-Semitic views and meets regularly in public parks to train in boxing and other fighting techniques.

The affidavit says they attended a torch-lit rally and a larger gathering in downtown Charlottesville the next day where they committed “multiple acts of violence” against counterprotesters.

Daley, of Redondo Beach, figures “prominently” in the organization, according to the affidavit.

The arrests come more than a year after hundreds of white nationalists descended on Charlottesville in part to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

Clashes first erupted on Aug. 11, 2017, as a crowd of white nationalists marching through the University of Virginia campus carrying torches and chanting racist slogans encountered a small group of counterprotesters.